Tywyll

Any hope on a breakdown of how it works for dumbdumbs like me?

Or the way the main setting it was designed for does. 20% of the time? Only if everyone you face has 100%+ Skills. And why? A broadsword does 1d8+1 and usually +1d4. Versus average soldiers (per RQ modules) even experienced soldiers rarely have a Bladesharp higher than 4. That's 17 damage without a special. So...no, he really doesn't. Yes, there are other weapons, but the common ones fall around there. A guy with a greatsword is a potential threat, but him hitting max damage is less likely (3 dice to max out). That's fair, and I don't want Rolemaster levels of complexity, but neither do I want brittle characters. That's an interesting idea. Facing greater threats isn't unique to RQ. But I think the instant death factor is (shared slightly with RM). I don't care about lucky hits and crits taking characters out. I'm talking about general survivability and the ability to emulate the source material with heroes that can take on armies. That's as much a part of Glorantha and by extension RQ, though the fluff never matched the crunch. Wanting it to square up is not a bad thing. I'm not talking about Combat as Sport. I prefer Combat as War. Balance may be the wrong word choice. Usable? Satisfying? Playable? A magic system where casters get one spell a day and, unlike DND, that spell isn't guarenteed to end a fight, is not a well designed one. Except, in some versions there is. Strengthening Enchantment added to total HP is one way, long term to, to provide more survivability to a character. Hell, you even have the BGB Heroic character optional rule (double HP). So, let's stop acting like I'm the only one who's ever had these thoughts or concerns. And dude, you can quit telling me how BRP plays. I've played RQ, CoC, and Stormbringer since the 80's on and off. I know what it does and doesn't do. I also know that its a flexible system that many have molded and twisted to do different things. So I will continue to look and see if someone has come up to answers to my own issues with the system. Feel free to stop asking me not to.

That is interesting. The 'Sorcery' power there has some potential. But the write up keeps referencing Exp? Not clear on what that is intending?

I'm aware of that. And I'm not expecting D&D results, I AM expected a system that can create the heroes of the setting and still function. They were vulnerable to attacks within a certain vin diagram of attacks. While yes, a special might threaten them (but 2d8+2 vs 15+ armor isn't much of a threat. Only Crits which ignore armor would be truely deadly, or attacks from things with +3d6 or more damage bonus. Average soldier? Not so much. Yeah, they created a falsely dangerous system. Look at daggers with their 1d4+2 damage which incapacitates the average limb with a minimum damage roll (and does more minimum damage than a broadsword for some reason). Meanwhile, in real life, people can be stabbed numerous times and survive, fight off attackers, etc. Only strikes to major organs are life threatening or incapacitating...so our heroes are weirdly fragile. Another point to what I consider bad design is how the system uses damage dice. Weapons that use 2 dice are inherently more dangerous than ones that use a single die, thanks to how averages work, regardless of the deadliness of the weapon in real life. A weapon that does 2d4 is always preferable to a weapon that does 1d8 because the averages are in your favour...meanwhile, historically there is little advantage to said weapon. Its just that weapons rolling different dice was a thing in the early days of RPGs so it's duplicated here. And to make a large weapon list have meaningful choices between weapons, you have to make them have mechanical difference. And if you want beginning, inexperienced characters to have not a lot of wiggle room between life and death, that's fine. But since the setting material includes Big Damn Heroes, I expect that at some point, you can take a knife to the arm without falling over. That doesn't fit the setting the rules originally were created for. Nor does it do well for long term play. If that uses up all their MP, for an attack that might bounce of armor, then it isn't balanced. Also, rifles are irrelavent to the discussion...modern day weapon values are often waaaay inflated in BRP to the point I don't even want to go there. If a character is built with the idea that they are primarily a magic user, I expect them to be able to function more than once or twice a day before needing to rest. This isn't first level DND, or at least it shouldn't be. If casting spells is your schtick, I expect it to be something you can do reasonably several times a day. A 4d6 spell, versus a single target that exhausts all your resources is pretty wasteful...especially if you are frozen casting it for a couple of rounds. But balancing damage output with expected armor levels with resource management is hard. But again, I said this was a different discussion so lets focus on magic systems right now.

Ah, yeah, okay good point. But it's kind of a double edged sword isn't it? I mean, if you get rid of your feelings of shame over something, or anger, you can never feel shame or anger again, right?

I've tried to wrap my head around the power system in REvolution d100 but I haven't been able to. Is there a post or anything where someone breaks it down in how to use it, it's limits, and benefits? Also, could it be ported into more traditional BRP mechanics games?

Okay, this system is rad, I don't know how I've missed it all these years. Probably because I have zero interest in lunar stuff and Glorantha stuff in general beyond what I can canabilize for my own worlds. Duration seems a bit weak (10 mp for a spell to last 50 minutes) and I'm a bit worried that Disruption might be TOO powerful with this system (5 or so MP and it's nearly a guaranteed limb breaker/death spell depending on the location struck). Don't like the Free INT limit, but could probably swap that for 1/10th your skill in the various manipulations, and I would probably make each spell its own skill as well. Hummm....

Yeah, familiars in RQ3 were broken stupid. I'll have to check that out. Very interesting. Thanks for the heads up. I'll see if I can find that. Okay, I have that book. I'll look that up. However that...sounds pretty stupid? I mean, why would you give up something permanently for the chance to recreate once? That's just... dumb?

I'm running a high level, more trad game of RQ right now. With 5 point Shield extended to season long duration, one of the players has 19 armor in all locations. Granted, he's screwed if he needs healing and what not, but its hard to reach that point. And looking at the Runelords in RQ2, many of them walked around in 10-11 point armor before protection spells. Laughing off a 4d6 hit is not unlikely for character's at that level. That actually hits one of my more general complaints about BRP with armor (or really any system that uses armor as damage negation). Attacks rarely have a sweet spot beyond basic level. Once you start rising in power, its like the designers didn't bother to consider how it would work. You either completely ignore attacks, are completely splattered by attacks, or die to crits. Without a Strengthen Ritual to increase HP, there is little wiggle room in your damage location hp to survive a hit powerful enough to penetrate your armor. At least that's how it feels to me. But that's another topic! Exactly. See above. Sadly true. Right now I would probably settle with one that allowed a caster to do balanced damage spells.

Please see above, I've added that in. Were there rules for actually playing that though, or was it simply here are some powers that they have with no context on how to learn it or gain it in play?

Yeah, I forgot about Ki magic, though I'm not sure I would consider that a magic system (though I guess it is as much of one as mutations, so fair enough). I'll have to dig up my copy to look at the mandala variant...can you tell me what's different? Is it just new spells? What did the Vikings box set add? What are Jelmre crystals and what source do they come from?

Oh? Where are the rules for RQ3 Lunar Magic? I left out RQ3 Dragon Magic because it wasn't, AFAICT, detailed enough for PCs to use. As for what I'm looking for... The setting is an old D&D setting so I'm looking for something to fit into the arcanist/magic-user/wizard slot. I love a lot of the ideas about RQ Sorcery, but some I hate. I love preparing long lasting spells in advance, the whole wizard in a tower feel that creates. I love the long term spells allowing the caster to transcend mundane limits. I loathe anything Free INT being a limitation on your magic. I dislike it's absence of direct attack magic. I'm not sure that Sandy's Sorcery or RQ4 really properly fix this (their take on blast magic makes it pretty weak, especially for the cost/casting time involved). RQG has this issue as well...spend 20 MP to do 4d6 damage! Never mind a 'high level' warrior will shrug that off with their armor+protection spells quite easily. I like Wizardry from BRP, especially the d-infinity website's house rules (sorry, can't remember the author's name) that better integrates it into Glorantha. What I don't like is that it doesn't feel as nice as the long prep wizardry, and I'm not sure how balanced it is damage wise. I also don't like that every spell with a duration basically lasts 15 minutes. Also, with only staves and familiars, a caster has a very real ceiling on how much juice they are likely to ever get (no binding spirits). So basically I want the perfect magic system... >.<

I am working on a campaign that I'll hopefully get to run in the next few months. It's primarily non-Glorantha Runequest. I'm looking for a magic system to fill the void of Sorcery, but I'm not finding anything that quite fits what I want. So I've been looking through all the power systems for BRP that I know of. These are the ones I have found or have at least heard of. Are there any I have missed? This can include somebody's homebrew that's on the web or whatever. BRP Wizardry Sorcery (Also Elric Magic and Magic World Magic, including Necromancy) Psionics Superpowers Mutations Enlightened Magic Magic Kung-fu (Swords of Cydoria) Biomancy (Swords of Cydoria) Witchcraft (I think there is a monograph about this? Don't know if I'm getting confused or how its different from any other system) Stormbringer/Elric/Magic World Summoning/Binding Eastern Magic Runequest Battle/Spirit Magic Divine Magic Sorcery Enchantment/Summoning Sandy's Sorcery RQ4 Sorcery RQG Sorcery Call of Cthulhu Mythos Magic MRQ/Legends Rune Magic (Battle Magic) Divine Magic Sorcery (1st and 2nd edition) Dragon Magic Necromancy Blood Magic Elementalism RQ6/Mythras Folk Magic Divine Magic Sorcery Mysticism Classic Fantasy Magic White Dwarf Demon Summoning Revolution d100 Various power systems

Oh, I'm very familiar with how powerful wizards are versus how powerful they were. I've been playing D&D since it was sold in Sears! That said, the point I guess I'm trying to make is that fireball was a big 'clear the room' style spell. Even if a wizard could only do one, he still had 2 1st and 2 second level spells left. AS I understand this system, you can never come close to that, and if you are comparing a higher level wizard, the math gets worse. When a caster has 3 fireballs and tons of lower level spells...well you just will never be able to throw 3 fireballs in this system, not 3 fireballs that could severly hurt comparable targets. God help you if you are up against foes in heavy armor! At least that's how it seems. Even with items to give you bonus MP.

Reading over Classic Fantasy, I'm trying to wrap my head around how to play a typical blasty wizard. As far as I can tell, you can't. A wizard is jumped by a group of bog-standard orcs/goblins. She manages to get off a fireball before they get to her. In order to have a 50% of reducing their locations (arms, legs and head anyway) to 0 and take them out, she needs to a) hope that 1/2 armor is rounded down, and need the spell at intensity 7. That's 9 MP. That assumes they don't make a resistance roll for half damage (I didn't see resistance in their stats so not sure what the chances are). So... an 18 POW wizard is now down to 1/2 her MP for the day (I assume you recover PP in CF as a 1 an hour or all per day, I couldn't find anything else about it). If she were up against armored opponents, even human brigands, she needs even more MP to hope to drop her opponents. BAsically giving her a single spell she's likely to cast that day. I know there are magic items that hold MP, but those don't hold much (not like getting a spirit in Runequest or something). So are wizards always basically 1 spell a day unless they stick to non-offensive spells? I know if she were rank 5 that would reduce the cost of that spell by 4 I think? But that still hardly reflects the capabilities of the source material. Do the PP come back quicker? Are there ways to store MP? And how does the memorization work for spells?

The point I was making is that there is nothing I have read in the rules that suggests things are rarer or not rarer. If they are uncapped, how difficult it is to find X level spirits isn't spelt out. Sure, in your Glorantha it might work that way, and maybe that's RQ3 influence, but in RQG? Are they limited? Who knows? We certainly do not at this point*. *Unless I've missed something in the core or bestiary somewhere.

Why would you assume they are rare? I know they would be in RQ3, but I've not seen anything in the new rules (or RQ2) that dictates a random distribution of battle magic magnitude over a given spirit population. AS you say, CHA 10 isn't much of a stretch and unless I've missed a rule somewhere, every average (3d6) spirit could be carrying a single 10 point spell.

Would you care to go into that a bit more? Why did you make that choice? I mean its obvious that you decided to go that way, but without understanding the rationale, it makes it harder to decide if one adopts the new thinking or not.

That's just as arbitrary as any other limit.

Ugh, this is all terribly confusing. I thought I understood it. But now I realize I'm overlaying my knowledge of RQ4, where bindings that allowed the spirit to see outside the object were specifically called out and cost an extra POW. I'll probably just got with that as its much simpler. Looking at NPCs in modules with their various write ups and the spells in their spirits and bindings, I don't believe it was ever intended for you to need to release a spirit to have it cast spells specifically, because most of the NPCs didn't have anything to control the spirits after release. But of course this is older editions, I'm not sure what they want in the new one.

Ah, I see what you mean now. Did 3rd edition have the limit of spirits based on your Charisma? To be fair though, this way does seem to be how they worked in RQ2 (there was really only one kind of spirit and you used their pow and int for your own).

Isn't that how it worked in RQ3? I thought that was how it always worked with spirits who had spells that were bound.

Personally I like the one from RQ4 (unreleased edition): "In general, lay members may not learn more than a 2 point cult magic spell, initiates may not learn more than a 4 point cult magic spell, and acolytes, priests and Rune Lords may not learn more than a 6 point cult magic spell (a 2/4/6 spell limit). If the cult spell is one that is not particularly important to the deity, lay members may not learn more than 1 point, initiates may not learn more than 2 points, and acolytes, priests and Rune Lords may not learn more than 4 points (a 1/2/4 spell limit). If the cult spell is a particular specialty of the deity, lay members may not learn more than 4 points, initiates may not learn more than 6 points, and acolytes, priests and Rune Lords may not learn more than 8 points (a 4/6/8 spell limit)." So a Humakt Rune Lord might know Bladesharp 8, but a Chalana Arroy Priest could only know it to 4 for example.

Yeah, RQ4 made the most sense, if you are going to go beyond the 4 point cap.

Because it is the way the system originally worked and as I said in the OP, I wonder if it makes the math and other aspects of the system work better.